Citizen Clinton Up Close

Right now, these projects are unfocused. Last fall Clinton brought in Maggie Williams, chief of staff to Hillary Clinton in the White House, to whip the 14-person Harlem office and its leader into shape. Williams, who also gives Hillary another line into her husband's business, says the greatest asset Clinton brings to his ex-presidency is what she calls "convening power." That's "the power to say, 'OK, who are the 10 people in the world who can get this thing done?' Then more than likely, Bill Clinton can get them to the table."

While he waits for it all to cohere, he talks, travels and inhales books, recently enjoying two revisionist biographies by Geoffrey Perret, one that says Ulysses S. Grant was a much cleaner president than is believed, and the other a sympathetic treatment of John F. Kennedy's psyche. Last week it was "Revenge," a new book by Laura Blumenfeld, a Washington Post reporter who tracks down the Palestinian who shot and slightly wounded her father. In the end, Blumenfeld learns to contain her thirst for revenge and make something positive of it. The subtitle is "A Story of Hope." Clinton called Blumenfeld to tell her he loved the book.

© 2002